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A town is saved, not more by the righteous men in it, than by the woods and swamps that surround it.
Henry David Thoreau
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Henry David Thoreau
Age: 44 †
Born: 1817
Born: July 12
Died: 1862
Died: May 6
Abolitionist
Author
Autobiographer
Diarist
Ecologist
Environmentalist
Essayist
Naturalist
Philosopher
Poet
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Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Woods
Towns
Saved
Environment
Men
Swamps
Righteous
Surround
Town
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
Some, it seems to me, elect their rulers for their crookedness. But I think that a straight stick makes the best cane, and an upright man the best ruler.
Henry David Thoreau
Perfect sincerity and transparency make a great part of beauty, as in dewdrops, lakes, and diamonds.
Henry David Thoreau
It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious.
Henry David Thoreau
Nowadays almost all man's improvements, so called, as the building of houses and the cutting down of the forest and of all large trees, simply deform the landscape, and make it more and more tame and cheap.
Henry David Thoreau
Talk about slavery! It is not the peculiar institution of the South. It exists wherever men are bought and sold, wherever a man allows himself to be made a mere thing or a tool, and surrenders his inalienable rights of reason and conscience. Indeed, this slavery is more complete than that which enslaves the body alone.
Henry David Thoreau
The meeting of two eternities, the past and future....is precisely the present moment.
Henry David Thoreau
Rescue the drowning and tie your shoestrings.
Henry David Thoreau
Live in each season as it passes: breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit.
Henry David Thoreau
I turned my face more exclusively than ever to the woods, where I was better known.
Henry David Thoreau
A traveler who looks at things with an impartial eye may see what the oldest inhabitant has not observed.
Henry David Thoreau
The outward is only the outside of that which is within. Men are not concealed under habits, but are revealed by them they are their true clothes.
Henry David Thoreau
My neighbors tell me of their adventures with famous gentlemen and ladies, what notabilities they met at the dinner-table but I am no more interested in such things than in the contents of the Daily Times. The interest and the conversation are about costume and manners chiefly but a goose is a goose still, dress it as you will.
Henry David Thoreau
What a healthy out-of-door appetite it takes to relish the apple of life, the apple of the world, then!
Henry David Thoreau
Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, seewhat isbefore you, and walkon intofuturity.
Henry David Thoreau
I saw a muskrat come out of a hole in the ice ... While I am looking at him, I am thinking what he is thinking of me. He is a different sort of man, that's all.
Henry David Thoreau
A strange age of the world this, when empires, kingdoms, and republics come a-begging to a private man's door, and utter their complaints at his elbow! I cannot take up a newspaper but I find that some wretched government or other, hard pushed and on its last legs, is interceding with me, the reader, to vote for it.
Henry David Thoreau
Men talk glibly enough about moonshine, as if they knew its qualities very well, and despised them as owls might talk of sunshine,--none of your sunshine!--but this word commonly means merely something which they do not understand,--which they are abed and asleep to, however much it may be worth their while to be up and awake to it.
Henry David Thoreau
Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them.
Henry David Thoreau
Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.
Henry David Thoreau
Our thoughts are epochs in our lives all else is but as a journal of the winds that blow while we are here.
Henry David Thoreau
